Will Firefox Mobile ever be released for iOS devices? No, blame Apple!

Does Mozilla have any plans to bring Firefox to the iOS platform? According to Matt Brubeck, a mobile Firefox developer, the answer is no, and if you're unhappy about this, blame Apple.

In response to a question on Quora, Brubeck had this to say:

I am a developer on the mobile Firefox team at Mozilla.

We currently have an iPhone App called Firefox Home, which lets you sync your Firefox tabs, history and bookmarks to your iOS device. You can get it from the app store, or read more here: http://www.mozilla.com/mobile/home/

We have no plans to release the full Firefox browser for Apple iOS devices. The current iOS SDK agreement forbids apps like Firefox that include their own compilers and interpreters:

"3.3.2 An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework."

Other browsers for iOS use the built-in WebKit libraries (like Skyfire) or do not execute any JavaScript on the device itself (like Opera Mini, which uses a proxy server). But unless Apple removes these restrictions, full browsers like Firefox are not allowed on iOS.

Personally, I believe that Apple should open out the iOS platform to more third-party stuff - browsers, keyboards and so on. I can think of no valid reason for Apple to restrict the installation of such apps on the platform.

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